the salt of the earth

There’s no need to wake up early on a Sunday morning. I would have really wanted to spend an extra half hour in bed, and miss this entirely. NOT! Somehow it’s really amusing (or irritating when viewed from my boss’ perspective; my wife, that is) that I wake up the earliest on Sunday mornings when there’s no work, and sleep until the last second I can afford the rest of the work week.

These musicians stuck out like a sore thumb and caught my attention while I was driving down the highway because they were strumming way too fast and out of sync with Adele’s “Chasing Pavement” playing on my car stereo.

They come from Ormoc City and are in the town of Palo probably to perform during the town’s feast day celebration. They were playing beautiful folk music and I thought about recording their music on my phone to share with you. Unfortunately, they stopped playing their instruments when somebody started talking to them. Next time perhaps.

This looks like a spare bike in case the engine breaks down. She will definitely need a helmet for that.

This woman was already selling salt at the market decades ago when I was probably still in diapers, and she is still at it. I met her last year and had an interesting conversation with her. She told me about the good old days when her income can afford her to send her children to school.

Today, she asked me why I was interested in photographing her instead of some pretty girls. Well, I thought to myself that pretty girls won’t ever have to worry about not being photographed. There is no shortage of photographers looking out for beautiful faces to show the world, but there are not many people who will tell the world a beautiful story.

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I tried playing Adele’s song again while looking at the first photo. Now I’m starting to imagine one of them singing with Adele’s voice. Geez! perish that thought!

13 thoughts on “the salt of the earth”

I remember how excited I was when I got my hands on a new copy of the National Geographic when I was a kid. I wasn’t mature enough then (maybe not now either!) to read the whole articles and besides I didn’t need to… the photographs had enough of a caption that told me enough of the story to satisfy me. I feel very much the same way with your posts. The photos, by themselves, tell detailed stories and then your narrative focuses it perfectly – highly successful photojournalism!
The woman selling salt? Beauty in abundance.

I was right all along, that you were the “story teller” one of the many reasons why you deserved the copy. Keep doing what you are doing. you touch so many lives because you do them with your heart , with great respect to your subjects. We’ll be following. God bless.

As always, you’ve got awesome photos here. I most especially love the first one. But with Adele in the background… hmmm. Not really.
Regarding your blog in general, I remember my history prof in college telling us to write about current events in our journal instead of just our emotions. But I thought, it wouldn’t make much difference because newspapers would have documented them. Instead, writing your own story/version of the things happening around you through how you actually feel about them would be much more meaningful. I think, this is just what you’re doing through these photos.
Great work!

btw, thanks for the book. I’m just a few chapters in, but what I’ve read so far, I can relate pretty well. And what’s interesting is that I usually am already thinking about the story while in between shots, just as the book mentioned.